here to do things that are equally as beautiful and how everywhere you go, you will be treated like family. >> a tutto noi. thank you very much for your attendance at such short notice. >> rupert murdoch is announcing a 24-hour cable news network. >> fox news channel, fair and balanced. >> it reflected murdoch and roger ailes' political views. and it becomes clear that fox news is roger ailes. >> rupert said among the three children, it was very likely that lachlan would be the first among equals. >> it's the first moment where james and elisabeth are given a little window into how their

father sees this thing. and they could either turn their back on the business and essentially wave the white flag, or they can try to double down and prove themselves to their father. and they choose the latter. >> it's october 2001, and roger ailes is at an annual dinner attended by all the new york politicians, the al smith dinner. >> i trust you all enjoyed your meal. >> this is one of the big events in new york city politics. >> i certainly enjoyed my meal. >> roger ailes has been the architect of fox news, one of very few people who rupert really, really trusts, and who rupert really needs. >> as the evening is winding down, roger hears from giuliani's office. the news corporation building has been attacked. >> at this point, roger has been

on edge for over a month. >> today we may stare in the face of evil. >> when the country was attacked on 9/11, it's almost as if the attack was on roger himself, and he very much treats it that way. he went from this happy conservative warrior to a kind of darker figure. >> he was very clear about his feelings about terrorists, and he was very forceful about the muslim terrorists. >> roger seemed to be getting very paranoid. >> people were just really scared of him. he kept a gun in his office. >> he was so paranoid that he made everybody else paranoid because he thought people were after him, and anthrax letters did not help. >> as all americans know, recent weeks have brought a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country. deadly anthrax spores sent through the u.s. mail.

>> in just a week's time we have four confirmed cases of anthrax, all with media connections. >> take penicillin now. death to america, death to israel, allah is great. >> several newsrooms were sent anthrax, and one of those newsrooms was t"the new york po post". >> ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcome aggregate american, vice president of the united states, richard b. cheney. >> when giuliani's office informs roger at the dinner, roger is moodily on fire. it's vindication that indeed they're out to get him, they're owl to get newscorp. >> and he immediately rushes back to the fox newsroom screaming "we're under attack, we're under attack!" >> at the same time lachlan murdoch is in a meeting strategizing with the hr people. >> for the time being, lachlan wants to really keep this

anthrax letter under wraps. he has thousands of employees working for him who might now be at lirisk. >> lachlan rushes to the newsroom, makes a beeline for aisles and in front of everyone tells roger to calm down. this is the absolute worst thing you could do to roger ailes. and worst of all, this is this privileged sniveling gnat of an executive in his face, the boss's son. he is furious. it is probably the biggest mistake lachlan has made to that point. and now there is a big mark on lachlan's back. >> lachlan murdoch is here. he is deputy chief operating officer of news corp., the

global media empire built by rupert murdoch. he is also considered to be the eventual heir to his father's building. welcome. >> thank you for having me. >> in 2000, rupert makes lachlan the deputy chief operating officer of the company. >> in this moment, lachlan, elisabeth and james each have their own places in the murdoch empire. lachlan is the one closest to the seat of power. >> at the time in most of the united states, he is less than 30. he is not very keen to go there. he loves australia. he's got an australian wife, an australian family. he manages to reresist for a year because she doesn't think he is ready for it. and when he does finally get there, well, it turns out he is not ready for it. >> in australia, he is a really big fish in a small pool. when he gets over to the states, he is no one. i mean, billionaires are a dime a dozen in america.

in the murdoch organization, he's got a whole bunch of really powerful experienced executives who have come up the hard way and who have fought for what they've got. and he finds himself in the middle of a shark tank. and he ain't no shark. >> if you ever get in a battle with me, you better not wound me. you have to kill me, because if i'm not killed, i'll come back and kill you. what did you really have in mind there? >> i'm sorry that's so unclear. >> roger has no patience for lachlan. lachlan is everything roger wasn't. >> and i grew up in ohio. i dug ditches for a living. i wanted to get out there. i always thought the only way to do it is hard work, and you got to be better and smarter than the next guy. >> in roger's view, lachlan is a

spoiled brat who has been handed everything. >> and the tension between aisles and lock lan murdoch is about to explode. >> last night, "the new york post" was informed that one of our young staff members had been confirmed to have had cutaneous anthrax. >> after the confrontation between lachlan and aisles in the newsroom, tensions remain incredibly high between the two of them. >> but of course there is also an opportunity for lachlan. >> you know, obviously people are tense, but i think they're rational and that they know that the risk to them is indeed negligible. >> he can assert his leadership. >> what message does "the new york post" have for these vile -- >> you read our message in the paper every day. >> he can prove that he is in

control of this newsroom. >> but aisles has now turned fox news into such a powerhouse that he actually has the stature that few people will ever have in murdoch's world. >> so a few days later, roger is still fuming about this incident, and he decides to call a meeting with rupert. >> aisles does something that no other murdoch executive can do. he lays down an ultimatum. your children cannot get in my way. if they do, i will leave. rupert completely sides with aisles. not only that, gives him a more generous new contract. even then, we're told roger is so beside himself that lachlan had no choice but to go down to roger's office in person and try to make peace. >> it's a sort of humiliating moment for lachlan, and it's also a moment when he realizes he isn't really going have the authority that he's been told he

has. >> rupert has basically chosen his employee roger ailes over his own son. >> this cnn original series, "the murdochs: empire of influence" is brought to you by sling. the tv you love for a price you'll love.

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suddenly, this drumbeat of war gives him an opening, and he uses it to transform the american news media. the bush administration was hatching plans to invade iraq. murdoch himself becomes a big champion of the war in iraq. >> roger is ensuring that murdoch has a tie to this white house during this critical time. >> roger ailes had a back channel, not just to george w. bush, the president, but to dick cheney and secretary of defense donald rumsfeld. >> we all understand now that the american press completely failed on iraq. the new york times, for instance, ran several credulous reports about the case for war. it was not critical enough. cnn -- >> does saddam hussein have chemical or biological weapons? >> made similar mistakes. but the murdoch empire was taking it to a whole other level. they were almost leading the charge. part of the campaign for war. >> rupert murdoch's new york post was one of the first to

claim, quite falsely as it turned out, that saddam hussein was behind 9/11. they ran an editorial called saddam's fingerprints, which claimed that the evidence for iraq's involvement is too powerful to ignore. >> fox news was pointing the finger at saddam hussein and iraq within days of the september 11 attacks, and it was doing it with unrivaled gusto. >> saddam hussein should be on the destruction death card right now, along with osama bin laden. >> rupert and ailes were embarking on this new position for the network. basically, fox news is going to shatter the notions that we've had about the way the press covers war. >> president george w. bush has launched war against saddam hussein. >> i will call those who publicly criticize their country in a time of military crisis, which this is, bad americans. >> fox cemented itself as something that we've never seen before.

a completely pro-war, pro-america network. >> we want to follow up now on those terrorist incidents. >> it was as though fox found its voice. it was the first time that i remember there being teams. fox basically setting up that we're team america. and we're going to wear american flag, lapel pins. and we're going to refer to the us as we. >> we're going to take care of baghdad. >> something that networks normally don't do. we hire all these generals to talk about, you know, how we're going to go in and kill the bad guys. >> they whacked a bunch of iraqis there, probably killed about ten. >> you're either with george w. bush or you're against america. and the terrorists are against america. and the people who brought down those planes are against america. so you make a choice, viewers. >> take the war. have you shaped that agenda at all in terms of how the war is

viewed? >> no, i didn't think so. i mean, we tried. >> tried in what way? >> well, we basically supported the bush policy in the middle east. >> even as we learned that maybe saddam didn't actually have access to weapons of mass destruction, and maybe iraq wasn't actually in any way involved in the attacks of 9/11, fox continued to support the war effort. >> if everybody thought we were unfair, then we would not be the most watched cable news outfit in the world. capisce? >> fox's pro-war america first stance sends fox to the top of the ratings, and it never looks back. roger has now given murdoch a 24-hour network that is not only a ratings powerhouse, but a political powerhouse. and he's injected the entire news media with a rightward

slant. nobody, presumably, is bigger than the family, but roger ailes has emerged as the most important executive in rupert murdoch's empire. >> as roger is sort of further cementing his success and importance in rupert's eyes, lachlan is continuing to struggle. >> lachlan wasn't really showing any particular sign of being a wunderkind. that was never his reputation. >> a lot of people thought he was just completely incapable of doing the job. he thought he knew it all. he's trying to take on big, big hitters like roger ailes, and rupert doesn't really support him. if it's a fight between lachlan and those executives, rupert is initially prepared to see that fight play out to see if lachlan

can win it. >> for lachlan, this creates this impossible situation, because lachlan has been told that he has all this authority, but every time he tries to wield this authority in the face of the company's other senior-most executives, they find a way to go over his head and undermine him. >> lachlan is feeling deflated. he's feeling disappointed. and then something happens that truly seals his fate. ailes wants to do a new talk show with geraldo rivera, who at this point is basically a washed-up daytime television talk show host. because lachlan is in charge of the affiliate networks at the time, ailes needs to go to lachlan to get his sign-off, even though ailes doesn't actually report to lachlan, and, for that matter, doesn't have any respect for lachlan. lachlan says no, and ailes can't believe that he's being told no

by little lachlan murdoch. ailes goes to rupert behind lachlan's back. rupert tells ailes, don't worry about the boy. go ahead and do the show. you know, that is the most stinging rebuke of his own son's authority, as you can imagine, don't worry about the boy. >> those five words make their way across the globe, reaching lachlan when he's in sydney. >> soon after, lachlan flies back to l.a. to confront his father. >> it's a painful encounter between father and son. lachlan lays it out that he just can't continue to work at the company if his father isn't going to back him. >> lachlan informed him, that's it, i'm not only leaving the company, i'm leaving the country.

once considered first among equals, today 33-year-old lachlan murdoch is no longer heir apparent to the $70 billion news corporation empire. >> lachlan murdoch, son of news corp chairman rupert murdoch, abruptly resigned and rumors flew about a rift within the family. >> in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, murdoch said he was particularly saddened by his son's decision. >> did lachlan's decision cause you great pain? >> yeah, absolutely. >> rupert is heartbroken. people inside the company say that, you know, rupert's face would light up when lachlan would arrive to a meeting. if he rolled his chair closer to him, rupert would sort of cheer up and he'd glow. >> it's one of those moments where you see the sort of contradictions of rupert murdoch when it comes to his family. because he hasn't done much to make his son feel comfortable.

he hasn't really helped him with the tools that lachlan would need to become his true successor. yet when lachlan decides to leave, rupert's devastated. >> it seems entirely possible, maybe even likely, that this is the end of lachlan murdoch's road at news corp, that he's on a different path now. >> rupert sends a message to his executives in australia that lachlan does not have a home there. he's out of the company. >> rupert was reeling. his entire succession strategy at that point for the company, what he imagined, he had to recast it. stant stainmaster laminate. check out our most innovative products. only at lowe's.

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but look what golo has done. look what it has done. i'm in a size 4 pair of pants. go golo. (soft music) >> how often do you speak to your dad? >> we speak almost every day. >> so does he tell you what to do? >> he's the boss. >> in some ways, i guess, if you think about it as royalty, they're supposed to have an heir and a spare. in the murdoch family, james is in some ways the spare. but james proved in many ways to be a capable executive, and he proved a real rival to his brother. >> i think james really did dream and think that he could one day be the king of the empire, in a way, oddly enough, that i'm not sure even lachlan did.

>> we owned the business, star tv. the business was really doing very badly. it was losing a lot of money. and then i remember getting a call from the president of the company at the time, how do you like chinese food? and within a month, i was living in hong kong, and you just dive in. >> in 2000, james is sent to china to run star tv. he's been in the business with news corp four years. he's got zero experience. >> every media company in the world wants to get in china. the problem is that china has restrictions. >> star was james's chance to shine. i think there was enormous pressure on him to prove himself, and that, yes, he would be the one who could crack china. >> i'm focusing on star. i'm focusing on asia. >> james proves himself very quickly to be as good as his father at putting profit before principle. >> demand for democracy is still here in hong kong.

>> he makes a speech, and he basically tells the audience, the people of hong kong should suck it up and get used to being under a chinese dictatorship and, you know, forget about democracy. and he tells the media, including the bbc, that really, all this emphasis on human rights is not a good idea. >> murdoch jr. ruffled feathers by slating the bbc, lambasting british regulation, and attacking anglo-american arrogance. >> we were all a little bit surprised that he'd gone that far. it was kowtowing, sort of, at its worst. >> he's trying to curry favor with the chinese, and it's very successful. >> james succeeds in china, where his father had really failed, but he does so by taking a page from his father's own playbook. he's really willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve.

>> james sort of helped open up the china market. they were allowing him to operate more freely. >> in addition to his business experiences expanding, james is always pragmatic. and james decided to kind of forge a working relationship with his father's wife, wendi, allowing him to have this extra conduit to his father, despite the fact that he resented her presence and influence over him. >> all in all, he makes quite a decent fist of what he has to do in china, and that's really enough for him to be hired to run bskyb in britain. >> james murdoch is a smart young man. i hope he will do a good job. he should not have been put in at the age of 30. he should have had to prove himself first. >> james has done a great job. there's no one in europe who could do the job. >> james is elevated to the chairmanship of bskyb, the british broadcaster, a job that elizabeth herself had wanted a few years earlier and had been denied.

>> elizabeth is never going to get the top job with her father. she decides she has to get out. >> but even the way she gets out is so in the style of her father. there's no conversation. she sends him a fax. >> against the advice of most of those closest to me and to the bemusement of many in our industry, i set off from sky -- >> she leaves bskyb, and she sets up this production company called shine. >> elizabeth, as a programmer, has something close to rupert murdoch's own eye for the new and the fresh. >> by the time she was running as shine, people were very impressed by her abilities as a tv executive. some of the shows she produces are huge hits. >> i'm looking for the one -- >> "master chef." "biggest loser." these giants of reality

television, not for her father's empire, but for her own. >> i think he was a little surprised that i decided to leave. i think there might have been a little bit of hurt in some ways. he'd never say that, but, he knew that i wanted to be my own boss. something that he's always been. >> even though there's turmoil between murdoch and his adult children, murdoch has plenty to be happy about in the new life he's building with wendi deng. plus free delivery with purchases over $299. shop all our appliances now. only at lowe's. ♪seriously♪ ♪like have you seen my silhouette?♪ ♪sheesh!♪ ♪it's giving main character energy♪ ♪ahhh♪ ♪like grab the bags, and start the...♪ our best flavors just got better.

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it is said that when you married wendi, that it was revitalizing for you. >> yes, certainly i think when an older man marries a young woman, it's a revitalizing experience, absolutely. >> wendi did all kinds of things to, shall we say, accentuate murdoch's vitality. he's trading in the stuffier precincts of upper manhattan for cool downtown soho. >> he starts wearing a leather jacket. >> he starts wearing designer suits. >> he dyes his hair.

>> you start seeing him mingling with the hollywood stars that his studios helped to underwrite. he takes on a slightly different profile because that's what wendi deng wants. >> there is footage of him working out, you know, lifting the weights and showing you that, you know, he is a man in all regards. >> you're talking about murdoch was a guy who at school was essentially mocked for his lack of athleticism. here he is as a corporate titan near his 70th birthday trying to show his youthful vitality and strength as well. >> all right, how was the walk? >> it was good. you walk so fast. >> wendi clearly had a mind on creating her own family unit with him. she would confide in associates that she made sure he was taking what she called little blue

pills to make sure that they could consummate their relationship. >> he's so fit. >> i wish i was. >> i'm getting bigger and he's getting smaller and fit. we're very happy. >> we're both very excited. >> yeah. >> you'll be the perfect mother. stay at home and nurse the baby. >> you'll be a perfect father doing diapers. >> i'll be the perfect father and employ a nanny. >> the owner of the parent company of this channel is a parent himself yet again. mr. rupert murdoch and his wife wendi celebrating the birth of their daughter this day. >> he and wendi have two little girls, grace and chloe. in most families, this would be a happy occasion. in the murdoch family, it completely upends the dynamic. rupert murdoch has been characterized in some ways as being unkind, unfair to his children, and i think that that's probably a fair knock on him. but in some ways, he's trying very much to do right by them.

he created the murdoch family trust. >> the murdoch family trust controls voting shares for the murdoch media companies. to have control of the shares is to have control of the empire. the trust ensures the company will remain in the murdoch family. the trust has a board, and that board includes rupert murdoch, prudence, his daughter from his first marriage, and elizabeth, lachlan, and james. but not all board members are equal. rupert sets it up so that his vote is actually four votes, so that he can never be outvoted. >> and then there is wendi's two girls. rupert did not include them in the trust, but wendi is not about to leave her two daughters without the dough. >> and wendi increasingly becomes agitated over this. she starts lobbying to bring them in.

>> there was a perception that she was like this barracuda. she managed to get into the relationship and turn it into a marriage and have these babies. >> and the children said, we shouldn't have to give up a significant chunk of our control of this company's fate simply because you had an itch to leave our mom. >> bitter family drama that's unfolding inside of one of the world's most prominent media empires. rupert murdoch and his young wife reportedly pitted against his grown children over their inheritance. >> for a guy whose publications, whose channel is as bombastic and as pugilistic as they are, he really doesn't like conflict. and he ultimately solves it by not talking about it directly to the people affected, but by sitting down with charlie rose. >> if i go under a bus tomorrow, the four of them will have to decide which of the ones should lead them. >> your four children?

>> yeah, well, the two little girls are too young to consider this at the moment. >> the four kids have to decide who among them ought to be the heir apparent? >> in terms of power, yes, in terms of leadership. they'll get treated equally financially. >> after the charlie rose kind of mumbled announcement -- >> so we've resolved everything very happily. >> media writers like myself and also particularly the murdoch family, they're all trying to figure out the implications and how this works. the four adult children will maintain the votes of the murdoch family trust, and that his two young girls would share in it financially but not have voting control. and the real effect of that was to ensure that wendi deng herself would never have a vote at the table. they felt that if they were to give equity to the girls, she would have both until they turned 18 or 21, and then she would have two votes for each of

their one. but how do you soothe ruffled feathers? well, he gave them each $160 million, which goes a long way. >> for rupert, the family and the business are so intertwined, relationships are so transactional, that money is sometimes the only way he knows how to communicate, the only way he knows how to show love, and the only way he knows how to ease frayed nerves or solve problems. >> after rupert resolves the controversy over the family trust, he turns his attention back to business. >> i think the journal's got a wonderful brand. >> and to a dream that he's had for many years. >> i don't think they'll ever sell it.

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i don't think we'll ever get it. i don't think they'll ever sell it. >> former employees say murdoch's always wanted to own a prestigious business newspaper. >> he's coveted the wall street journal for years. >> as the beat reporter at the wall street journal covering him, it just became like the air that we breathe. i was just like, of course he wants it, i also would like to be size two, like whatever, a lot of people want a lot of things. >> rupert murdoch does something which was kind of mind-blowing. he makes a hostile bid for dow jones, the company that owns the wall street journal. it's a public company, but it's controlled by a family, the bancrofts. >> the bancroft family has owned dow jones for over 100 years. it's an old new england family.

they are pretty buttoned up, and the posture of that family has always been, this paper is not for sale, we are dedicated to its future. >> but rupert murdoch is wily, and he understood something about this family that i'm not sure others had appreciated, which was maybe because of his own family, that you can break them up. >> murdoch makes an unsolicited offer for the company. this enormous price, $60 a share, which is $5 billion, far above what the value of the paper is. he initially sent this offer over privately. very soon after murdoch's bid arrives, they meet as a family. this family does not get together very often.

they are far-flung, they're three generations, multiple branches. they don't know each other particularly well. >> okay. >> we're all set. >> and the person who's the most outspoken in that family is leslie hill, who's a member of the board of dow jones and is very mistrustful of rupert murdoch. >> when you first heard about the murdoch offer, what was your reaction? >> you've got to be kidding me, and i don't think so. >> how about the rest of your family, how do they feel about it? >> well, you could ask all 46 of them, and you'd probably get different opinions. >> when the offer comes in, they're paralyzed by it. as soon as they don't immediately respond and don't accept his offer, rupert's very interested in having that become public because it adds a tremendous amount of pressure. >> this one sounds big, david. >> okay, go. >> you ready? >> yep. >> news corp, the giant media company controlled by rupert murdoch, has made an unsolicited $60 a share --

>> what could jack bauer, bart simpson, american idol, and fox news soon have in common with wall street journal? >> almost double what the publisher of the wall street journal was trading at before the surprise offer. >> by the way, the newsroom of the new york times is in pandemonium, pandemonium. newspapers like the wall street journal don't change hands very often. this is a once-in-a-century kind of moment. >> the first thing i remember trying to do was get an interview with rupert murdoch. i remember they said, come on over. >> and so i walked down 6th avenue and went to the news corp building into the belly of the beast. and there were newspapers everywhere. that's the thing i remember actually more than anything. he had almost every newspaper lined up on the wall.

and i think he read them. he was so knee-deep in the family dynamics of the bancroft family and who liked who and who wanted to screw who and who was going to kill who and how you were basically going to split these people apart. of course, he told us repeatedly, i'm not here to break up the family. i think my family should meet with their family. he was a family man who had been a steward of his media companies and he really wanted to be able to prove to them that he was just like them, just like the bancrofts. >> the bancrofts finally agree that they're going to sit down with rupert murdoch. >> the bancroft family is meeting with rupert murdoch today to discuss news corp's $5 billion offer for dow jones. i'd like to be a fly on the wall.

>> rupert decides to show that he is a family business as well and he brings in his younger son, james, who is at this point the only one of his children to work inside the company. but he's two hours late for the meeting. he immediately walks past the whole gauntlet of bancrofts and goes and gives his father a big hug. leslie hill is very skeptical of this show of affection. >> what was your impression of murdoch when you met? >> he kind of mumbles, so he was hard to understand. we were in this boardroom with the largest table i've ever seen and i felt like i had to practically dive across the table to hear what he was saying. i think he is an incredible businessman, but i felt that he wouldn't respect the integrity

of the paper. >> it takes the bancrofts 18 days to come back with their counteroffer. they want two board seats on dow jones's board in perpetuity. rupert is completely offended by this, that they need these kinds of guarantees to deign to sell to him, so he sees it as a real insult. >> on the countdown to the start, race 1. >> james is on an expansive yacht watching the america's cup, and he has to step away from his fellow partygoers in order to take the call from his father to discuss what it is that they should do. and at that point james tells his dad that they should just walk away and leave the bancrofts sort of twisting in

the wind. now that the news of rupert's interest is out there, james understands what that's going to mean. so rupert decides what they're going to do is basically give them a last warning. if you don't take this deal within 21 hours, we're pulling the offer. ♪ the most advanced display in a smartphone. ♪ and... for the first time... iphone can detect a crash and call for help. ♪

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the bancroft family, which controls the "wall street journal," is currently deciding on whether it will consider a sale of the company. >> 68 days after the initial offer for the "wall street journal," rupert decides he's going to kind of issue a warning shot. you have one last chance to keep disrespecting us, and then we're going to pull the offer. for the bancrofts, the stakes are pretty high. the stock price leapt after rupert made his offer public. the share price of the company that they have been entrusted to protect is going to plummet if they don't take this offer. and the bancrofts blink. >> the bancroft family said no way would they sell to this crude media heathen. but then they thought about the $5 billion he was offering, and

well, what do you know? >> rupert tells his colleague, they caved, they gave us everything. >> the most important and influential business publication in america is now in the hands and in control of the murdoch family. >> what was the feeling inside that board meeting? >> sadness. and i think a lot of uncertainty about, is this the right thing to do? >> people in the newsroom were shell-shocked. there was a lot of anxiety about what exactly it was that rupert was going to do to the paper. what rupert murdoch really did was he transformed the "wall street journal" into a general interest newspaper. >> they didn't want me to come back to cover news corp, there wasn't going to be a person covering news corp.

>> the marvel of rupert murdoch is how exponentially larger his ambitions and his reach became. >> he controls 40% of newspaper circulation in the united kingdom, almost 70% in australia. >> in the united states he has a powerful movie studio, multiple television stations, fox news, which is gaining in influence at this point. >> it's an incredible moment to be rupert murdoch. >> because it was james's idea to sort of hold the bancrofts' feet to the fire, the maneuver raises james's value in rupert's eyes. >> well, 34-year-old james murdoch is being given a much larger role overseeing all of news corp's european and asian operations, making him the heir apparent to the murdoch empire. >> he gets to be the ceo of all of the family's business in europe.

>> does this finally mark my invitation to join the british broadcasting establishment? >> it was a position that rupert himself had held for a long time, so for rupert to relinquish something like that is such a big step. >> here's james dutifully following all the steps that his father has put in front of him, exceeding expectations in those jobs, proving himself as an able executive. it's at this point that it seems succession is finally settled. james murdoch is now the clear heir. but a scandal is right around the corner, and james's good fortune is about to be threatened. >> morning, james. >> james murdoch is now at the top of the company, almost certain to succeed his father. >> and he's in the midst of

trying to buy bskyb, the british broadcaster, when the hacking scandal breaks. >> outrage in britain this -- >> accused of hacking the phone messages of public figures. >> thousands of victims. >> the murdochs are going to need every bit of help they can get to outrun the scandal and get this deal done. ♪ it's hard to believe that just a few months ago the first wave of covid-19 had emptied the streets of naples and italy was in lockdown. thankfully, i've arrived during a brief moment of normality. restaurants are open and masks are not required outside. and we'll be sticking to the local rules. >> pizza, pizza. >> napoli is a truly thrilling city. the second you arrive, you're engulfed by a magnificent chaos. and there's no point in fighting it